Commute Week, Part IV

Prequel #1: was that Idol's All Star Medley or did I have a nightmare when I dozed off? Freda Payne was...ghastly, simply ghastly. Thelma Houston, my son said it, looked like she belonged on the corner, though she can still sing. KC, well he wasn't so bad.

Prequel #2: As I was driving home yesterday, I came up behind a new looking car bearing the license plate "WED IV 25". The plate took me a moment to decipher, and I now wish the woman driving it a happy anniversary. That is the conclusion of "True Stories from My Wednesday Commute".

Today, class, we will learn about Paul Cornell, the king of networking, who invented the commuter suburb in these parts.

Cornell's family had moved to Illinois, following the death of the Paul's father when the boy was age nine. Paul worked his way through school, passed the bar exam and moved to Chicago in 1847.
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Chicago at this time was extremely walkable, with everything within a couple miles of the city center. Most people worked close to home, as the Dan Ryan, the Toyota Prius and the Howard Stern Morning Show had not yet been invented in 1850. It was around this time that an Illinois senator steered a friend to a hot real estate deal that would make money for everyone. Politics and the spoils of office had already been invented in 1850.

Paul Cornell had been rudely welcomed to Chicago. His life savings were stolen from him as he slept on the night he arrived in the city. A sympathetic lawyer provided Paul with a loan and got him a job. The lawyer's name was Stephen Douglas, as in Stephen Douglas, the Illinois Senator. The job was with the law firm of Skinner & Hoyne (as in Judge Skinner and Hoyne Avenue in the city).

Paulie worked hard, met a girl, got married. His new brother in law was John Evans, the man after whom the city of Evanston was named. Evans, along with a chap named Orrington Lunt (as in Orrington Street in Evanston and Lunt Avenue in Chicago) founded a school, Northwestern University, in his namesake town. John Evans, in turn, was related to George Kimbark (Kimbark Avenue, a north-south street that runs right into the University of Chicago), a real estate speculator and developer who would become the founder of Riverside, IL.

Anyhoo, south of the city there was a 300 acre parcel with a "For Sale" sign in it. The parcel of land extended from what is today 51st Street down to 55th Street and from Lake Michigan to the Illinois Central Railroad tracks.

Cornell bought the land and traded 60 acres to the IC railroad in exchange for the IC constructing a depot at 53rd Street and setting up 6 stops a day in and out of Chicago.
The commuter suburb and commuter railway were born. Cornell named his new area Hyde Park after the London version.

Kimbark bought land just west of Cornell's land. Cornell's uncle bought other adjoining land. The Illinois legislature created Hyde Park Township out of all that. The lads all made just a wee bit of money by developing their land. It probably didn't hurt to have a pal who was a Senator.

Oh, and Paul Cornell, the king of networking in the pre-LinkedIn era, had a cousin named Ezra who kept himself pretty busy, too. Ezra founded Cornell University back east.

Paul Cornell got Cornell Avenue in Hyde Park, a couple of streets east of the school that set up shop in his town, the University of Chicago, on Kimbark, over by there.

A scant 150 or so years later, you may wish to ruminate on all these hooked up guys as you sit in traffic, or sit on the train, or contemplate starting your own suburb so you can get rich and famous.

Chicago, Stress Champion

I like lists. They provide a great platform for discussion and disagreement. When you see how the lists are compiled, the discussions can become downright stressful. With that having been said, here is Forbes Magazine's list of America's 10 Most Stressful Cities, the list the gave Chicago a coveted championship.
10. Philadelphia
Forbes says its expensive to live there and very densely populated. Duh. That's city life. W.C. Fields' epitaph is "Better Dead Than in Philadelphia". I think Philly is like New York without the charisma. This is definitely a top 10'er, Philly.

9. Providence, R.I.
Expensive and lots of unemployed people, says Forbes. It's Rhode Island, I think the real issue is that they're all worried about being small.

8. Salt Lake City
I got nothin'. It UTAH, what do they have to stress about?

7. Cleveland
Fourth fewest sunny days per year. But they have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, that's good. The Drew Carey show took place in Cleveland, that was fun. That was then and this is now: Drew Carey's doing The Price Is Right (awful), the Indians suck (although they KO'd the White Sox) and Brady Quinn is still an understudy. Maybe it's the name...how about renaming it something desirable, like Orlando. Orlando, Ohio. Nevermind. Cleveland, you're screwed.

6. San Diego
One of the best places on the planet. Imagine having every day being climate controlled, sunny and warm, and the Pacific Ocean over by there. Play golf, play in the ocean, play play play. You think you've got stress in San Diego, call Cleveland.

5. San Francisco
A jewel of a city. Ever been on the Alcatraz tour? Awesome. Golden Gate? An icon. Great food, highly livable, a little run to wine coutry to the north, Big Sur to the south, and no snow when Buffalo is getting 19 feet per hour all winter. San Francisco. I like it.

4. Los Angeles
Forbes says it's expensive, has the worst air quality and gas costs a lot. It's also full of Angelinos, who are goofier than squat. There's East LA, ugh. On the other hand, there's the USC football team, the USC cheerleaders, the USC marching band. Hollywood. Maybe better skip Hollywood. Surrounding LA are great places to plany, like Manhattan Beach, Marina del Rey, Malibu. I still wouldn't want to live in LA. The freeways are the worst! Definitely a stressful place.

3. Detroit
Do they still burn everything on Halloween? This is absolutely a high stress town, but no, Devil's Night, um, burned out. They replaced it, no kidding, with Angel's Night, no kidding.

2. New York
Big, bold, brassy, NY is America. It gets on your nerves a little, but that's part of the character. Lousy pizza, regardless of what they tell you. I like New York. It's high energy. When the NY'ers start bragging, change the subject. They forget what they were bragging about and go with the new topic.
1. Chicago
Some of the good: theatre, sports, architecture, the lakefront parks, the food, neighborhood taverns, spring/summer/fall, the universities, the museums.

Some of the bad: the politicians, the winter, the expressways, the winter, the sports venues, the winter, the taxes and the public schools.

The city has been reborn over the last two generations. What the list sees as stress, is, like NYC, energy. Tap into it.

Or avoid the stress and just go visit when you need an energy fix.

Chicago 2016?

I'm pretty lukewarm on the whole Olympic fever thing. NBC brings a zillion hours of TV coverage of what happened the night before, there's a lot of flag waving, and there's a collective chest beating about medal counts. It's just not that interesting to me.

I find that the athletes themselves present a compelling story. They've worked countless hours to develop skills in their respective sports, and I respect that. My issue is that some sports aren't all that, um, Olympic, and others aren't really that interesting.

Take beach volleyball as an example. Why is beach volleyball an Olympic event? It's a nice passtime for the hardbodies who hang at the beach while the rest of us are working, and it has a professional tour for the devotees. But a world competition for Olympic medals, I don't get it.

Equestrian events should present the medals to the horses. Basketball in the Olympics...not as good as a the NBA, or even most NCAA games. Gymnastics and track and field events, those seem to me to be most "real" Olympic events, traditional events that have some heritage. I take a bit of notice, and hope there's not too much drug enhanced performance in what we see, and it's fun to see world class track stars go head to head.

That brings me to the subject of Chicago's bid for the summer games eight years in the future. Is it really a matter of great local pride, or is there something else? Check out the Chicago 2016 website, where you can already buy souvenir clothing http://www.chicago2016.org/

If Chicago hosts the Olympics, there could be events added that have local significance, for example:

• Olympic competition to quarterback the Bears. It's usually the more the merrier anyway, and the Bears aren't likely to have regular quarterback eight years from now...or eight weeks from now.
• Olympic competition to determine the best pizza, New York need not apply, and there will be no French judges.
• Olympic stacking old kitchen sets to save parking places. This really belongs in the winter games.
• Olympic fastest driving through a construction zone.
• Olympic beer chugging. The women's division would be more interesting.
• Olympic pickle bucket drummer and saxaphone player doubles. Events would be held under the train tracks next to Sox Park, where all the great pickle bucket drummers got their start. Saxaphone players gold medal round is based on playing "The Flintstones" theme over and over. And over. And over.
• Olympic polka dancing, a real crowd pleaser. Favorites usually come from Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Chicago area, known world-wide as "the polka belt".
• Olympic "see how many relatives you can give patronage jobs" competition. If he hasn't been ousted by then, the Toddmeister will likely have the gold clinched years before the games.
• Olympic auditing. This would determine, as part of the games themselves, who made the biggest pile of money putting on the games in Chicago.

Any events you want to add?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

NASCAR yesterday at Michigan: Carl Edwards wast he winner --as predicted here on Friday. Not so good for the other recommendation, Jimmie Johnson was 17th. This weekend: BRISTOL AT NIGHT!

The Gambler

If you have any money parked in traditional investment vehicles, you are probably accustomed to getting hammered. Real estate is in the tank, equities have been in a steady decline and low interest rates mean low returns for cash. Don't despair, there is an alternative.

The alternative is the Sportsbook.

I was never much of a gambler. I didn't play cards, I didn't set foot in a casino until I was into my, well, not a kid anymore, and I didn't get into betting on games. Playing cards was like work for me. I could explain the arithmetic behind all the casino games and I wanted to be the casino, not the gambler. Betting on the games required research that I didn't want to do.

Then along came Pete. Pete was an inveterate oddshound. He tracked the horses, worked the baseball lines (a weird subculture of wagering) and followed the football spreads. Pete and I would talk baseball generalities, as he is a devotee of the history of baseball and a veritable font of statistical minutiae, as well as an all around good guy.

One day, when Pete brought up the current outlook for whichever team he was following at a time when I wasn't any too interested, I pointed out the arithmetic that makes baseball a bad addiction. I explained to him that there are 162 games in a season. Every team is going to win 50 games and lose 50 games, so there's a hundred games, or about three months worth, that we can push to the side of the road, almost 2/3 of the season played to get back to where you started. So, if everyone skipped the first hundred and played just the remaining games, I continued, we'd have a six week baseball season and I wouldn't get so bored and we'd all have time for things that matter. Pete uttered "national pasttime" and I responded with "it's time has passed" as he considered my argument.While this was a pretty clear case of figures lie and liars figure, it appeared to assuage Pete's current state of angst.

Pressing on, I challenged Pete to consider a new source of entertainment that provided a compact and immediate gratification completely unlike baseball, plus time for a nap. I introduced Pete to NASCAR. What followed this introduction is a parade of rewards that I could never have expected.Tomorrow, I'll explain how we corrupted a casual conversation for our mutual gain, both personal and financial.

DAY 3 of the Amazing Photo Mystery: Here's another hint in the ID the Photo challenge. The photo was taken from the perspective of a place named in honor of a Chicago politician (imagine, honoring a Chicago politician!). By the way, the place doesn't have an actual street address, how 'bout that!